My Mother and the Evolution of Consciousness
Part I

My daughter said to me the other day “Isn’t it amazing how we can receive the most Divine understanding, have moments of deepest connection, and still act like jerks?” Thank you, Isabella. Well said. We sure have our work cut out for us.

One of the things I love about the writing I shared in Book I, The Road Home: A Light In The Darkness, is that all the wisdom I received was in direct response to my asking about my perceived shortcomings. Through my writing, I came to understand that we are not really ”jerks,” but we sure do have a long way to go in our evolution out of the blindness of ego consciousness. And maybe all our “jerkiness” could be the signal to get on the road a little sooner!

These next three blogs are going to be a series taken from the beginning of my next book. They are about my mother. I am a little embarrassed to say that for most of my life I felt entitled to my jerkiness with my mother. Maybe we all feel entitled to “not heal” the relationships that have hurt us the most. Or we feel we must forgive no matter what. I preferred avoiding thoughts of my mother altogether until I finished my first book, and then quite unexpectedly, that was simply not a choice. My personality was perfectly satisfied with avoidance; my Soul had other ideas.

The following is taken from the Introduction to Book II, which I am planning to call The Road Home Book II: Into the Fire. I have broken it up into several consecutive pieces.

“I have to tell you that as exciting as it was to actually complete and print Book I, on the eve of publication I found myself standing in an unexpected Fire. Well, it wasn’t really unexpected. I knew that Fire was there, but I had been deliberately avoiding it. So it wasn’t until I turned around to face it that I realized how very hot that Fire was. I’m talking about my present day family. What would they think of all I had written? What new position of alienation would I find myself in now? Why was this always the next leg of the journey, the next Fire I had to walk through—speaking something that would surely make my life more difficult, perhaps more dangerous, and potentially hurt or offend people I love? But of course, by now I know the answer to that question. Exactly this has been a big part of my journey, whether my personality likes it or not. And there is such a profound feeling that it is exactly this Fire that I came here to stand in and not be burned. It’s just that it felt so hot as far as my present day family was concerned.

On the other hand, I hoped that publishing the book could be a great relief. Okay—THIS is who I am, this is who I have always been, and this is my truth, for better or for worse… sigh…

It’s one thing to write your heart out. It’s quite another to have your writing read by others. And it’s a completely different confrontation to have it be read by people who are actually part of your story and not necessarily portrayed in the most favorable light. I have no problem talking about some of the unattractive parts of my own personality—my powerlessness, anxiety and depression, my back sheep identity, my pre-occupation with pain and darkness. Some people said it was courageous to write so vulnerably, but it really didn’t take courage. I had to speak. Tell me, if your child was drowning and you had to jump into a raging river to save her, would you call it bravery if you made the leap? No, I don’t think so. You do what you have to do. Well, a part of me was drowning and there really was no choice but to jump in.

Don’t get me wrong. There is vulnerability, but it does not lie in my personal saga—the vulnerability is about saying I heard messages from a Divine Source.

When the last edits of my manuscript were near completion and the book was about to go into print, I found myself sobbing with my husband and son Eddie over my birthday dinner in a fancy restaurant in Denver. Long and short of it—it finally broke through to consciousness that my family would very likely be hurt, disbelieving, or excruciatingly uncomfortable with my childhood memories and my past life recollections. I did not want to hurt anyone. The point of my book was not at all about childhood pain or past life trauma. The point of my book was the incredible and unexpected good that came out of it. The point was that each person’s solitary journey from Darkness to Light can open into the Road we all walk together. The point was that there is a Divine Presence that is waiting to help us find our way.

But I didn’t think my family would see it that way. And I suddenly realized that I really cared about that.

The Road Home: A Light In The Darkness